Weak Seams
by raining-down-hearts
Summary: Tsubaki Nakatsukasa is part of a legendary weapon clan, a clan with history, so when she inherits the family talent, she understands when it makes her big brother angry. She can't understand what he does next, though, can't possibly love the violent path he's chosen. He left with bloody footprints, and she must try to build a new life around the void where he used to be.


heyyy everyone! this is my contribution to Reverb this year, which is a fandom-wide event where artists make art, then are assigned authors to write fic inspired by said art. As you can see, i'm an author. ;) This fic comes with two playlists by the amazing Professor Maka (I'll have links to them on my tumblr, raining-down-hearts, as well as up on my profile here eventually) and some gorgeous art by ilarual (same deal with the links.) I couldn't have been partnered with better people, and it was a blast to build this story off their artwork! thanks for reading!

also, the very pretty cover of this story is by ilarual. :3

* * *

 **Weak Seams**

* * *

Tsubaki Nakatsukasa had forgotten.

It was an unforgivably normal day. She began as usual: scrapping with Black Star for first shower rights (their water heater was possibly the first one ever made and worked for a strict maximum of three minutes), diving into her Spartoi uniform, feeding Black Star, laughing till her ribs hurt at his exuberant gratitude, drying while he washed, wrestling her hair into submission, and finally heading out the door.

It was the kind of white-hot desert day that glazed everything with shimmering heat. It was beautiful, she thought; the whole city was gilt in sunshine, burned to a dry roughness like unglazed pottery. Even the birdsong was lazy. Her first breath was syrupy thick, and she closed her eyes to tilt her face toward the laughing sun, peace swelling bright in her chest.

Then Black Star poked her in the shoulder and said, "Hey, what day is it? Is that shit for Stein due?" and the bubble burst.

"June fourteenth," she whispered, suddenly hollow.

He looked at her with raised eyebrows, but something in her face must have put him off, because he only said, "Cool, thanks," and kept walking.

The heat was less purifying, now, and more threatening; she might just burn to ash. She put a clammy hand over her aching heart and concentrated on keeping up with Black Star. He slowed down for her after a few blocks, watching carefully. She shook her head once and gave a little shrug.

"Sure?" he asked skeptically, nose wrinkling.

"It's nothing." It was everything, and she'd been foolish enough to think it long buried. She'd thought the wound was healed, so to be suddenly short of breath and full of fresh pain was startling. Things seemed crooked, just a little sideways, and yet the world was still turning and people still walked the sizzling sidewalks. She was the only one hurting, and she admitted to herself that she wanted to turn around, to crawl back between her cool sheets and weep into her pillow, but- there were things to do today.

"I didn't mean to make you remember," Black Star admitted irritably, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked raw and pink under the harsh sun when she glanced at him, the same as she felt. "I just now realized. Frick."

"I'm okay." She gave him a smile that felt strange on her face. "You didn't know. I'll be all right." What did _he_ remember? She'd told him so little, gagged by hurt and guilt and grief, and he'd met her brother only briefly three years ago, under very strange circumstances indeed. Was Masamune nothing but darkness to Black Star?

One more scorching green glance, and he let it go, but when he hand-walked up the two hundred DWMA steps, it was more aggressive than usual.

Tsubaki noticed, and on any other day, she'd have proactively tried to calm him down to avoid another meister-related catastrophe like the one yesterday (and the day before that, and before _that_ ) but today she just couldn't. There was no room in her for anything but memories that refused to be ignored. She floated on instinct through the blessedly cool halls with the other senior members of Spartoi and settled numbly into her seat, ears full of chatter and mind full of painful grey fog.

Was Masamune anything but darkness to _her?_ When had all the light gone out of his eyes, and, worst of all, how had she missed it for so long?

* * *

" _It always snows in the winter. Every year. It'll snow every year for the rest of your life. Why are you always so excited?"_

" _It's pretty," Tsubaki declared, tongue poking out the corner of her mouth as she worked her fuzzy pink gloves on, finger by finger. Her ponytail kept sliding over her shoulder to hang in her face as she bent over to slip on her boots; every few seconds, she'd puff hair out of her eyes. Masamune knew from experience that if he offered to braid it for her, she'd only end up with a knotted mess at the end of the day, so he didn't, though he kept casting vaguely annoyed glances at it. His own long hair was perfectly, sleekly tied at the nape of his neck, of course. "It makes everything look new and different. And it-"_

" _Tastes good, I know," he muttered, shaking his head a little. Still, she saw he was smiling, something he did less and less as he got older; she didn't know if it was a teenager thing, or just a Masamune thing. "That's unsanitary, eating snow."_

" _Why?" she said stubbornly, hoping to keep the smile on his face._

" _Because."_

" _Why?"_

" _Because! It just is!"_

 _She gave him a mock-suspicious look. "You just don't want me to eat anything good," she accused._

" _Yes, that's why I let you steal my dorayaki and never say anything," he snorted, crossing his arms._

 _The smile was still there, a faint quirk at the corner of his lips, turning his stern face into a near-perfect copy of their father, lighting his somber indigo eyes, dark and deep as the blue snow-shadows outside. Tsubaki put a gloved hand over her mouth to hide her own smile and said, "Come look at the snow with me. It's pretty." She didn't add, "And you never want to do anything with me anymore," but deep down, she thought it._

 _He hummed consideringly, glancing out the window, which was glittering with pale, crystalline frost, spiky claws of it spreading out along the glass. For a moment she let herself hope, but then he said, "I need to finish my book on the-"_

" _Kamakura period," she finished, staring at her gloves._

" _Yes." He sounded surprised that she knew what he was studying, which made her sort of sad. Didn't he know she followed everything he did? That he was her guiding light on the horizon, her signposts along the way that said: You are doing this right, you are just enough, this is your proper place, everything is as it should be._

 _He was turning to leave, and the snow fell faster outside with a silent ferocity that echoed in her heart. "Is it interesting? Your book?" she said desperately._

 _Masamune paused, then shrugged one shoulder. "My namesake lived then."_

" _Yes." She knew, of course. She knew all about the legendary swordsmith Gorō_ _Masamune, revered still across Nippon, and she knew why their father had given such an important name to her brother. He was the eldest; thus he would inherit the gift of their family, all the scintillating weapon forms that came before, contained in a single, priceless, deadly body. He was the purest form of familial heritage, the best of their clan distilled down to perfect lethality._

 _And she was Tsubaki, the scentless flower. Masamune cast her a slow glance, worlds of reluctant yet sibling-vicious superiority in the twist of his lips, then left._

 _She stared out the window for a while, exhaling on the glass and painting dancing stick figures in the fleeting fog of her breath, then pulled her gloves off._

 _She needed to practice. The snow would always come again, every year, just like Masamune had said, but even if she would only ever know one form, she would make it her best, the sharpest, the most deadly, and with a river of blood she would force him to be proud of her at last._

* * *

"Tsu? Hey. Tsu."

"What," Tsubaki said, with titanic effort.

Maka's mouth was pursed as she flapped the neck of her shirt in a vain effort to cool down. "You okay?"

"Yes. Yes, sorry, just- daydreaming, you know. What's up?"

"Are you and Twerpface still gonna come hang out tonight? Soul wanted to know. Something about a video game."

"Yes," Tsubaki answered, pulling a hand down her face and wondering what showed. "Around six, I think." Did she want company tonight? She didn't know. For so long she'd put her own wants to the side, making room for the important things. Sometimes she wasn't sure she even knew herself at all.

"Okay." Maka grinned impishly. "I'll make us cookies."

"Oven at 350 degrees, double check that it's sugar not salt," Tsubaki murmured automatically, well versed in Maka's 'cooking.' " _Three_ fifty, not four. See you later."

"Yeah." Maka trotted off with a little wave, her short summer skirt swishing; Soul looked feverish and immediately followed her like the good, smitten weapon he was. It was enough to make Tsubaki smile.

"Lunch?" said Black Star ten minutes later, popping up by her locker as she put her books away.

"Yes, please."

She was starving suddenly, so hungry that her hands shook. It all tasted sour in her mouth, though..

Masamune had loved the food she made. She had been so proud, too, of what a good cook she was. She'd had her own tiny apron by the time she was six, and the first recipe she'd learned to make all on her own was Masamune's favorite: green tea chazuke with salmon. Sometimes he would even come into the kitchen when she and her mother were cooking, to steal a bite or ten, or simply watch them work. He was typical in that way at least; he'd had that bottomless teenage-boy black hole stomach. Those rare days had been peaceful, full of laughter and sweet smells and togetherness. She would beg him to chop her daikon for her; he did it perfectly, uniform even slices that made every dish beautiful.

* * *

His knife skills had always been peerless, at least until the peace went away for good, smothered in the dark, deep winter of her tenth year.

 _Tsubaki was bruised, and gasping, and she felt sharper than ever. Even her bones felt changed, stronger, as if she existed_ always _now in the split-second swell of ecstatic power just before a transformation. She was sure the feeling was hope- and she was sure her brother would find time to train with her soon._

" _Your speed has improved," her father puffed, slipping lithely beneath her strike and whacking her in the stomach with the flat of his blade-arm._

 _She grunted, let her own scythe-arm sizzle away, and blew out a ragged breath, wiping her forehead. "Can we try again, please?"_

 _Sanjuro's dark brows rose. "Yes. You'll be-"_

" _Tired and sore tomorrow, I know," she laughed, still gulping air with her hands on her knees. He awarded her a fond smile and a hair-ruffle with his human hand, before settling into a combat stance, low and ready. He looked like a dragon, she thought, coiled and beautifully lethal._

 _Masamune's gaze was tangible on her back. Tsubaki remembered again her resolve from the beginning of this terrible winter, before it drowned the country in merciless white. She slid into her own stance, lifted her arm turned steel, and tried to turn her spine to the same by sheer force of will. When Masamune fought, he was silky-smooth and inarguably perfect, she thought fondly. Her big brother was amazing, and she was getting closer and closer to something he could be interested in, like it was when they were small._

 _The motions were familiar and comforting as her father lunged. They danced together, smiling, and she laughed breathlessly over the clatter of their blades._

 _He finished it two minutes later, this time by tapping the side of her neck with metal warm as skin, and she threw up her hands in frustration, shaking sweaty bangs out of her face. "Ugh!"_

" _You are improving," Sanjuro said firmly, ever supportive.. From behind her, where Masamune stood watching, she heard a swish of hair over fabric, as if he were shaking his head._

" _Once more," she begged, frowning sternly to keep the whine from her voice._

 _Her father hesitated. "Tsubaki, this isn't necessary. You've worked very hard today, and an injury will do nothing but put you out of training."_

 _True. She'd have to make sure she wasn't injured. "Please? Once more. One more time." Masamune was nearly ready to begin training under a meister, and she was still so far from that skill._

 _Sanjuro studied her carefully, and she could see the approval mixed with questions on his face, but he only nodded._

 _Steel clashed again, faster and faster in a violent cacophony. Sweat stung in her burning eyes, and the scrape of the door as Masamune moved to leave was overloud in her ears. Her heart was pounding like it might burst, and her whole body was hot with humiliated, bitter disappointment._

 _It happened the same way an infant took her first breath; naturally, inevitably, and once done, unforgettable. From the instant it happened, there was no going back. Tsubaki's arm was a scythe, and then something burning and electric-strange welled up in her stomach. Then her arm was a slender sword nearly twin to Sanjuro's, shining like a star fallen to earth. It was beautiful._

 _Her father stopped instantly. She took two steps, then froze; her pulse was too loud, too frantic, and she was trembling. She had to fight the instinct to retreat fully into the blade form, to hide herself inside steel._

" _No," said Masamune, suddenly very close. "No! No!"_

" _I-" she said helplessly, turning to him with an outstretched hand. "What-"_

" _No!" he screamed, face pulled taut and mouth gaping open blackly in a nightmarish snarl._

 _He was shaking her, but it didn't hurt, so when Sanjuro threw Masamune back almost brutally, she was shocked at last, and afraid._

 _It took a lot of concentration to force her arm from its strange new form back to stinging flesh, and the power that swelled up this time scraped rough along the tender edges of her soul. "Father?" she whispered, staring at his broad shoulders.._

 _He was standing between her and Masamune. He was protecting her from her brother._

" _Don't be scared, Tsubaki," Sanjuro said after a moment, but he didn't move, and Masamune was still shouting, wordless, broken roars of rage like she'd never heard a human make._

 _The icy wind howled outside, clawing at the shutters, pushing and pulling the pines until they creaked like the dying. She put her hands over her ears and sank limply down to the floor._

* * *

Sweat had Tsubaki's white Spartoi blouse sticking to the small of her back, but the air conditioner inside Deathbucks was humming merrily along, raising goosebumps on her arms. She still felt hot anyway, anxious and edgy, and when Black Star came trotting back to the table to ask for the third time if she wanted iced or blended, she came very close to snapping at him.

Instead she gritted her teeth and said abruptly, "Let's just go somewhere else. Let's walk around." She needed to move..

Black Star frowned, pausing to stare at her; it was always jarring when he was momentarily still, the pause of a predator just before leaping. Sometimes, when she was this tender, his laser-focus worry was almost too much. Her shoulders had long ago gotten used to bearing everything, and to have someone, even her meister, offer so earnestly to share the load still gave her pause. She took a deep, slow breath, aware of the burn of tears starting behind her eyes. "No coffee?" he asked. Which really meant, with what was surely a fair amount of internal anguish: "I don't get to eat eight of those poppyseed muffins?"

"Not right now, please," she said, swallowing. Her mouth was so dry she'd probably choke, as dry as the scorched, golden desert stretching outside Lord Death's supernatural domain. Suddenly she wanted to shrug out of own her too-tight skin, her suffocating, bloody, fratricidal life.

Instead, they went for a walk, treading the shimmering-hot streets of Death City in silence. Tsubaki kept her head down and watched her feet, and Black Star stayed deep in thought.

It surprised her when he said later, "You were planning to go back to Japan after the thing with your brother, huh? After you- after." They'd missed going back to finish their day of classes, and normally she would never, ever, _ever_ skip, but it was impossible to concentrate on anything except how difficult it had become to recall Masamune's voice. She could close her eyes and remember the two freckles on his strong Nakatsukasa jaw, the pattern of his favorite blue scarf, the exact shape of his scarred hands, but not his voice.

She wiped the back of her arm across her sweaty brow and glanced at Black Star; he was looking straight up as he walked, at the sweltering blue sky, with his hands linked behind his head and his elbows sticking out. "Yes, I was," she admitted, unsurprised that he'd figured it out. He was annoyingly smart when he wanted to be. "I told you that, though. Why I came here originally. It was for Masamune."

"What changed, after? I mean, like, why did you decide _not_ to leave? Because back then, I was all ready to chase after you and shit, so you know."

"Really?" Tsubaki said, laughing a little. "You knew even back then?"

He snorted inelegantly. "Of _course_ I knew. It's one of my many, many, many talents. And you were kinda obvious about it anyway, you know."

Her fourteen-year-old self had hidden it all desperately away, pushed it deep down until it couldn't be hidden any more, until the actual moment of her brother's death, until she came back to flesh and felt the cold rain washing away the phantom feel of her brother's warm blood. Yet Black Star had seen, even though they barely knew each other then. The tears made an unwelcome return and began to sting. "Yeah," she sighed, trying automatically for a wobbly smile. "I didn't expect to like it so much here, or to make so many friends. It wasn't- it just turned out to be a different sort of place than I'd thought, is all. I'm glad I stayed."

"Me too," he said, grinning roguishly. "Sooo…. Was it, like, your old man's idea? A family thing? To, uh, come chasing after your bro. To kill him. When you were freakin' a little _kid_ still. Because-"

"No," she said hastily, ducking into a shaded alley and pressing her back against the cool stone wall. "No, my family didn't ask me to do it, so don't get all upset."

"I _wasn't_!" he lied cheerfully.

"It was- it was all my idea," she said, closing her eyes.

* * *

 _It was another bone-white winter; Tsubaki sat by the window and watched the snow's slow hunger envelop the garden, erase it beneath a pale shroud, the color of mourning. Her mother had not left her bed today, and when she heard her father walking down the hall, she got up._

 _He blinked when she slid the screen to her room aside and poked her head out; the newspaper in his hand and the redness around his eyes was enough._

 _She asked anyway. "He murdered someone else?"_

 _She said it brutally, just like that, because a small part of her wanted to lash out, to make her father hurt the way she did. It was inexplicably satisfying even as shame washed over her._

" _Yes," he confirmed hoarsely, looking at her. She realized absently that she had grown, could nearly meet his eyes now._

" _Did he eat the so-"_

" _Yes."_

 _She put a palm over her mouth, then reached out to press her father's chilly hand between her own. "I'm sorry," she croaked, distantly aghast at the guilt in her voice, so evident and yet so much_ less _than what she really felt. Was this complicated agony growing up, and if so, how could she ever have envied her big brother?_

" _You don't need to apologize for your birthright," Sanjuro said, with the old affection and pride in his voice, but his eyes were shadowed, and when he ruffled her hair, it didn't feel the same._

 _He blamed her and her unexpected, improper inheritance of the Nakatsukasa bloodline, just a little, far down in the depths of his darkest heart where the life's unspeakable thoughts lurked for everyone. She knew it with her new, grown-up knowledge of pain, and probably he had guessed that she knew- it was hard to hide anything, living in a house grown so quiet- but they didn't speak it. She hadn't meant to take so much from Masamune, or to be so_ good _at what had been stolen, to rub it in his face and make him leave, make him murder._

 _She hadn't meant it, hadn't chosen it, but she had still done it. Now she retreated into her room to watch the snow and Sanjuro pass softly by._

 _It was all the worse because she would do it again. She would rip her family apart and drive Masamune into exile, all for the riptide rush as she changed from a chain scythe to a smoke bomb to a five-bladed star, as she did the thing only_ she _could do. She was the legendary pride of the Nakatsukasa clan, now, even as she was its accidental, second-darkest shame._

 _The snow outside her window grew much deeper, and the shadows longer, before she noticed dully that someone had left some mail for her on the table. There was a clothing catalogue, a local newspaper, a letter from her second cousin in Kyoto, and a small, ivory envelope addressed only to the Nakatsukasa clan._

 _She frowned, wondering why her parents hadn't opened it, then slid a thumbnail under the flap._

 _It was a creamy-white brochure, with stark black characters printed in elegant lines. The front bore only the silver embossing of a stylized skull and, in English, the words, "The Death Weapon-Meister Academy."_

 _She closed it immediately and threw it back on the table, lifting her hands in a gesture like surrender, as if the paper would burn her. Then she sprang up, grabbed it again, and tore it in two. The halves fluttered like a wounded dove as they fell._

 _Tsubaki's heart was racing, and her lungs felt full of suffocating snow. It took astonishing effort to whisper to herself, "The Academy. The Shinigami."_

 _Once she said it out loud, though-_

* * *

"-I just knew," she said, and she opened her eyes, surprised when she felt two tears spill onto her cheeks.

Black Star was sitting criss-cross applesauce on the ground in the alley now, leaning back, shading his face with one hand as he looked at her. The effort he was putting into listening practically vibrated off him, and it made her feel better, to know he was taking it all so seriously now that she had decided it was time to tell. "So you came here."

"No. Not right then. That was two years later." She wiped the tiny tears away with the tips of her fingers and sighed, letting her head thunk back against the bricks and staring straight up at the sky. It was the flawless, perfect, searingly hot blue she'd come to associate with Death Valley and nowhere else. There was nowhere else in the world where the veil between the before and after of death was so thin, and sometimes if she looked at the summer sky long enough, let her eyes water and burn in the merciless light, it make her think she could see _past_ it. "I left home a month later. I went after him. Somebody had to stop him, and it felt like it had to be me."

Black Star didn't ask how she'd found her brother; he only blew out a breath and wiped his forehead on the back of his hand. He was smart enough to know just what kind of shitstorm she'd stepped into back then, leaving home. Masamune Nakatsukasa had been the golden boy of the most legendary weapon clan in all the world for his whole life; he had been taught things she didn't know. He'd been the precious scion of the family whose weakest member commanded a stratospheric price far above that of anybody who wasn't a Death Scythe. She understood why her parents hadn't reported him missing when he first left, she _did_ , but sometimes in her own dark heart she thought: _Maybe he could have been saved, if they'd been less ashamed, if they'd caught him at the beginning, brought him back. Maybe if could have been different._

It couldn't possibly have been different, of course. Not in any universe where she held the clan birthright. She knew that now. She'd seen the ugliest parts of him in vivid color- she knew how deep the rot and envy and violence went- but still her angry, futile hindsight remained. The media'd had a field day when he was eventually charged with his first murder, in Shenzhen, China, and her parents had been too blindsided to keep her from the first, worst of it.

"It was bad," she told Black Star softly, knowing he'd hear her, though her throat was dry. Her hair was sticking to the back of her neck, and her skin still felt fever-hot to the touch even after so long lurking in the alley's shade. "It was really bad. Worldwide manhunts, bounties, government agents from different countries waiting at our gates, hours and hours at the police station answering questions. Sometimes the reporters snuck onto our property to watch us through the windows, and we couldn't do anything about it. The cops didn't care. They thought my parents were helping him, I think, or that he might come home. We had to disconnect the phone once the newspapers got our number. And he just kept moving so fast after the first kill, all over the world- they think he was posing as a luggage handler and stowing away on planes for a while, and he cut his hair."

Black Star looked up at that. "His hair was long when I met him."

"Hair grows," she said, trying to smile. "After a while he got better at hiding, I suppose." Black Star scooted over to her side of the alley and placed a cautious hand on the back of her calf, over the pinkish scar that was just beginning to fade.

* * *

 _She hadn't recognized her brother when she saw him._

 _She was shivering in the cruel late-winter wind, trying to politely elbow her way through the astonishingly packed New York sidewalks. She was nearly twelve, and she was as tall as a fifteen-year-old, gawky and long-legged, but America was still very strange to her. She always had to fight the urge to keep her eyes down, to disappear. She_ did _keep her hood up, all the time, or leave her hair loose despite how it tangled. It wouldn't do for the media to spot her and figure out what she was doing; as far as the world knew, the new princess of the Nakatsukasa clan was safe at a private academy somewhere in Japan, far away from her brother._

 _His murders had slowed over the past year, presumably a temporary reprieve while he practiced his new Uncanny Sword form, but he still hadn't been caught, and the news coverage was tapering off. It was an uneasy peace at best, and the wings of white hair on her father's temples had surely grown. She hadn't seen him face to face in months, but she knew._

" _Don't hesitate," Sanjuro had told her, warned her, during their goodbye, holding her close with his big hand on her neck, unusually affectionate._

 _Tsubaki hadn't clung to him like she wanted. She had straightened her back and nodded like a warrior; she had accepted the fact that Masamune was eating human souls to gain power like she possessed, would eat her soul too if given half a chance, and she had turned her back on home and towards the wider, more dangerous world._

 _So she was distracted, and worried, and wondering how long her family would continue to fund her quest- 'hunt' was a word she didn't allow herself to use, even in thought. Her brother had been sighted in New York not two days ago, and the Nakatsukasa name still held power. She'd flown in on the redeye, taken a taxi straight to the police headquarters, and begged to see the security camera film. She had recognized Masamune despite everything, had seen the same long neck and slim sloping shoulders and ever-so-slightly crooked nose she saw each day in the mirror. Blood and bone didn't lie. Masamune had cut his hair, left it shaggy and just long enough to fall into his eyes, which were darkened with contacts. In the convenience-store video he'd been smiling and laughing with the man he'd killed that night, flashing her father's pleasant smile._

 _For the first time, sitting there in an interrogation room with her thighs burning even through her jeans on the icy steel chair, she had_ wanted _to kill him._

 _So yes, she had been very distracted that day in New York, and when she spotted a tall Japanese boy working his way competently through the crowd just as she was doing, turning sideways and weaving through with trained grace, it was a long moment before she realized._

 _He'd already changed his appearance. His hair was a little shorter now, streaked with chunks of golden-blonde, and his clothes were different. He was holding pads in his cheeks and lips, subtly changing the shape of his face; an old trick, but she'd sat right by him as their father taught it to them both, and she knew it right away. He had on a thickly furred parka and dark jeans, casual, and he blended in beautifully with all the skill of the Nakatsukasa ancestors. No wonder he hadn't been caught._

 _Someone bumped into him. He turned with a brief smile- her father's smile on that grown-up face, just as handsome as ever even after the atrocities Masamune had committed- it was a hunt now in earnest, and she straightened her thin, childish shoulders. Her blood and bone called to her and she followed, unsure if she was predator or prey._

* * *

"Let's take a break, huh? Go home where it's not twice as hot as Satan's third nipple?" Black Star said, unfolding into a handstand before backflipping onto his feet. He gave her frazzled ponytail a gentle tug. "I'm gonna shrivel up if I don't get some Gatorade in me stat. It'll be super sad, and you'll cry more, and then _you'll_ be dehydrated. It's imminent disaster or whatever."

She pressed away a few more small tears and gave him a wobbly smile. "Okay."

The heat was a physical push when they stepped out of the alley. Tsubaki felt like she was fighting her way through the sunlight, through a honeyed fog of white-hot pressure, and the chill of their air-conditioned apartment was nearly painful in contrast. She collapsed onto the couch in front of the air conditioner in a puddle of blissful goosebumps, pinching her sweaty shirt to flap it away from her stomach. Black Star went and stuck his head under the kitchen faucet, locked the door and checked the windows out of long habit, then shoved the living room table away from the couch and, always uncomfortable with idleness, started doing pushups on the floor next to her. He'd angled himself so his tattoo would be facing away from her. Thoughtful, but she hadn't forgotten his family problems in the face of her own. It was simply her day to unpack things, and his would come when he felt it was time, they both knew. Knowing the unspoken had always been the best part of their partnership, and his soul was steady and warm against her own when she reached, her lighthouse in life.

It took a while before she felt ready to start again. She closed her eyes and turned her face more fully into the cold air, and said between full-body shivers, "He got away, that time, and I went back home for a while."

Black Star only grunted, but she could still feel the heat of his hand on the scar Masamune had left her with. Bleeding and hobbled, afraid she might never walk again, too terrified to try and look beneath all the blood to see how badly he'd hurt her, too humiliated and scared, too heartbroken, she had sat in the black slushy snow and screamed. Alone in dark New York with only the squealing rats and guttering street lights, she'd watched him stroll away in the possessed body of his next victim, a girl with beautiful hazel eyes and wild dark curls. Her name was Maria. Tsubaki kept the newspaper clipping that had announced the discovery of Maria's dead body in a dusty manila envelope, high on top of the bookshelf, with the rest of Masamune's crimes. It was a very full envelope.

"He didn't cripple me. He didn't kill me, and he could have. He didn't kill me the second time I caught up with him, either. It took ten months, and he was in Brazil. I had to hire some private investigators to help me find him, and bribe the local cops."

Black Star switched to sit-ups, still aiming his tattoo away from her. "Slippery guy, your bro. Is it okay for me to hate him a little or will that totally bug you?"

Was it? "Yes," she decided. "I hate your family for what they did to you." Sometimes hate was necessary. Her brother had taught her that, and a harder lesson she'd never learned except for the one he'd taught her as she forced her blade between his ribs: that sometimes love was necessary, too, for the most difficult things.

" _Aw,_ Tsu, shit, I'm gonna blush," he said breathlessly, snickering. "So, what, didn't work out that time either, so you figured you'd come here and pull out the really, really big guns?"

"I hadn't met you and your biceps yet when I decided to come here," she sighed. He snickered again. "Don't you dare make a 'ticket to the gun show' joke, either."

"I _wasn't_ gonna."

Liar. "Masamune liked bad jokes," she whispered, lying on her back and squinting up at a cobweb on their ceiling. The two tiny tears that escaped when she shut her eyes again slid sideways down her temples and into her damp hair. "Not that he'd admit it, but he did. He liked a lot of sugar in his tea, and sweet foods. He was always breaking into the kitchen at night, and my mom always heard him, but he kept trying to sneak past her."

Black Star snorted. "Okay, that's a little funny. What else?"

"He didn't like animals, he thought they were dirty, but he liked kids. I think that's why he didn't kill anybody really young. I think he wanted the- the challenge, of adults, so he could perfect his technique. But kids' souls are supposed to be just as powerful, and he never hurt one. Even though they'd have been easier to kill. The, uh, the logical choice. He was _very_ logical, so it's got to mean something that he didn't kill any children."

Her meister's eyes were clear green and as glassy as good jade when he looked at her. "Tsu-"

"I'm almost done." She couldn't stop.

"Okay."

"He- he wanted to kill me in Brazil, I saw it on his face, and still I don't know if I fought him as hard as I could have. I don't know if I did everything I could to stop him, sometimes I think- I think- I don't know. I needed you for it, and more time." They'd had so very little, she and her big brother. Her teeth were chattering, and she was shaking. She was crying in earnest now, tears turned icy on her cheeks in the air conditioning, and Black Star's hot, calloused thumbs wiped them carefully away as fast as they came. She did not open her eyes yet. "I tried, though, I really did. I tried so hard. I was always so scared in countries, I didn't know anyone, I didn't know the language usually, but I tried _so hard_ to find him and stop him, and I'm still so sorry for-"

"I'm not sorry you got your clan talent thingy. We might not be partners if you hadn't. He's just the ultimate sore loser.."

"Yeah," she choked, digging her cold toes into the scratchy couch cushion. "I tried, but I couldn't, and he just kept hurting people all those years I couldn't do it, I couldn't kill him even though everybody told me I had to, but he was my _brother_ , Star, and he couldn't kill me either, those first times, and I just couldn't- I wasn't strong enough to fight him or to do what I _should_ have, I wasn't enough-"

The warm palms cupped her face, wet with her own cooling tears, like a benediction. "You love each other."

"We love each other," she wailed, sobbing into her hands. "He killed people, and I love him. I love my brother. Oh, I _miss_ him so much!" The feverish heat that had plagued her all day on the anniversary of Masamune's death was gone, but she still felt that burning ache in her heart.

"It's okay," said Black Star, stroking her ponytail. "It's okay."

It wasn't, not yet, but she knew it would be someday, and she'd be able to remember her big brother without pain. All the boundless love in her life would drown it out- her meister, her friends. She'd made herself another family here, and they'd be there for her while she kept the dead safe, close to her battered heart. It was enough, and it was more than she'd ever imagined.


End file.
